JACK: And when they got home, they found a hook on the passenger door!
HURLEY: Dude, that wasn’t even scary when we were kids.
SUN: Um, can we get back to the subject at hand?
ILANA: Hey, after a flashback to a scene where I was suffering from a horrible trauma and Jacob came and talked to me—that’s right, he effing TALKED to me, didn’t HEAL me, the bastard—I’m going to tell you all that you’re candidates.
HURLEY: Dude, we already figured that out, but we’ll pretend we’re stupid and say, “For what?”
JACK: For what?
HURLEY: Oh, right, I forgot. Jack’s as dumb as a brick.
ILANA: I have no idea, but as I’m a fanatic follower of Jacob and I always do what he tells me, I have to tell you that Richard will know.
BEN: And Richard’s really, really old. Oh, and he doesn’t age!
HURLEY: Duuuuuuude.
BEN: No, he has really great make-up people. I mean, look at how much older Jack looks after six years on the island. Go ahead, check out our first season—I mean, first year—flashbacks.
HURLEY: Dude, shut UP.
ILANA: Well? What’s our next step, Richard?
RICHARD: The hell with you, the hell with them, and the hell with me!
ILANA: What? What did we do to piss you off?
RICHARD: No, hell!
HURLEY: You mean “hell, no”?
RICHARD: No, hell! Aw, hell. We’re all in hell, so I’m going to go see the devil now if you don’t mind.

[CUT TO: The Canary Islands, 1867, Richard in a REALLY ugly beard and long hair, riding his horse hell-for-leather to a cottage where his wife is dying of consumption or TB or whatever makes you cough up blood in 1867. Long, boring scene about how much he loves her (in Spanish, with subtitles, making it even more boring to the average American!). He rides off through the rain to Evil Doctor's house.]

RICHARD: I need medicine. My wife is dying of consumption or TB or whatever makes you cough up blood in 1867.
EVIL DOCTOR: Do you have enough money? Because I’m an Evil Doctor and I only help people for money. I am obviously the Lost writing staff’s commentary on nationalized healthcare.
RICHARD: This is all I have. Plus this cross necklace, which should be worth something because it’s pretty and golden.
EVIL DOCTOR: This necklace is fake! You can’t have the medicine. Plus, we have to have a reason to get you to that island from this island, so please be gentle when we struggle and you kill me.
RICHARD: Uh—
[They fight. Doc hits head on table and dies. Richard runs. Gets to cottage with medicine, but wife is already dead.]
[CUT TO: Jail cell. Richard is reading the Bible.]
EVIL PRIEST: Can I see your Bible?
RICHARD: Uh—
EVIL PRIEST: Hey, it’s in English! You can read English?
RICHARD: I’ve been teaching myself. I want to go to the New World, even though this is 1867 and all of the countries in North and South America have names that people, you know, use. But hey, let’s give people the impression that I’m, like, four hundred years old instead of only two hundred, because that would be so different. Say, Padre, I’d like to make my confession and receive absolution.
EVIL PRIEST: Nope.
RICHARD: What? Hey, it says right here—right here [points to Bible] that you have to forgive me.
EVIL PRIEST: And it says right here [points to script] that I don’t.
RICHARD: Damn.
EVIL PRIEST: Yep. Say, let me blindfold you and introduce you to…
EVIL CAPTAIN: He speaks English? Okay, I need another slave that understands English.
RICHARD: Hey, wait. Evil Doctor, Evil Priest, Evil Captain—I’m beginning to sense a pattern here.
HURLEY: Dude, I think we found someone as dumb as Jack.
[CUT TO: Long, boring scene below deck where Evil Captain put slaves. Storm. Shipwreck. Oh, NOW we know why the statue is just a foot now, and hey, great CGI, stupid story.]
EVIL CAPTAIN: I must now kill all the slaves, because it’s not like I could use them to built huts or find food or something like that. It’s a lush, green island which simply demands that there’s tons of fresh water and food, but hey, I’m evil. So, die! Die! Die!
RICHARD: No! Stop! Hey, wait a minute—why am I shouting? That will only attract his attention. Go ahead, they’re only redshirts anyway.
MAN IN BLACK: Raarh! Roar! Blegh!
CAPTAIN: What’s happening? Why am I standing under dripping blood and too stupid to understand what it means? I think I’ll go upstairs and check why my men just screamed and dripped blood on me.
RICHARD: Good idea. Leave the keys, will you?
[CUT TO: Long, boring scene of Richard dying of thirst and hunger while trying to free himself from the shackles.]
MAN IN BLACK: Hey, I can get you out of here, but you have to kill someone for me first. Because you’re already damned and in hell, and he has your wife.
RICHARD: Okay.
MAN IN BLACK: But do it FAST, or I’m stuck here for another 140 years or so.
[Richard goes through jungle, finds the foot, gets beat up by Jacob.]
JACOB: You can’t kill me.
RICHARD: I know, Ben’s gonna do it in, like, 140 years.
JACOB: I can make you live long enough to see it.
RICHARD: After the beat-down you just gave me, I think I’ll take that deal. By the way, everyone thinks you’re a dick.
JACOB: But at least I’m a mysterious, all-knowing, and powerful dick.
RICHARD: Oh, so you’re the representation of Obama for this episode.
JACOB: Shut up and go bury your wife’s necklace so you can dig it up 140 years from now absolutely untarnished and without mold or dirt.
RICHARD: Okay. But I have one more condition.
JACOB: Name it.
RICHARD: I get to be short-haired and clean-shaven from now on.
AUDIENCE: Thank Heaven!
[CUT TO: Present, where Richard digs up the untarnished necklace.]
RICHARD: Hey, Man in Black, I’m ready to join you now!
HURLEY: Dude, wait. I’m going to talk to your dead wife and tell you what she’s saying first.
DEAD WIFE: You look SO much better in short hair and clean-shaven. Oh, and you’re not in hell.
RICHARD: Okay. I’ll stick with Jacob for now, even though he’s dead and Smoke-Guy is obviously more powerful.
HURLEY: Dude, this was just one big, long [AUDIENCE: BORING!] background episode. Now we know how old you are. Like, we coulda done this in ten minutes, but nooo, the writers wouldn’t listen to me!
RICHARD: Hey, you’ve had a whole boatload of background episodes. This was my first and last.
HURLEY: Point, dude. So let’s go back to the others and figure out who’s gonna die in the series finale.
RICHARD: If we kill Jack, you get to be the island’s guardian.
HURLEY: Richard, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Yeah, it’s not like that.

Good idea. Lousy execution. I may watch a couple more episodes, but I am not impressed. They’re repeating it tonight if you missed it.

The Good Wife: Julianna Margulies, Christine Baranski, Josh Charles, and the obnoxious kid from Gilmore Girls playing an obnoxious kid on this show—what’s not to like? Actually, this was a very good pilot. Sure, it’s a lawyer show, but it’s a very different twist. This is a woman re-entering the workforce because her husband is in jail on corruption charges, struggling for her job against a kid fresh out of law school and ready to cutthroat his way to the top. And it’s from Ridley Scott! No wonder it’s so good.

Modern Family: The critics are hailing it as the best new comedy of the year. I watched it. Eh. Watched it some more. Okay, that was funny. Watched to the end. Yeah, it’s funny. I think I’ll keep watching.

Cougar Town: Eh. I laughed a bit. It might get funnier. Boy, you can’t watch this show with young kids around, though. When did primetime TV get so adult at 8 p.m.?

And this is the difference between me, and a Judith Warner from the NY Times. I watched the show in the hopes of finding a comedy that would make me laugh. Here’s why she watched it:

I’d watched “Cougar Town” on Wednesday night not because I thought I would like it, not because I was genuinely interested in seeing it, but because I thought I, too, would be able to derive messages from it about the zeitgeist — the pop-culture zeitgeist now permeated with talk of cougars, women over 40 who take up with younger men.

Darn it! I’m just not up on the current pop-culture zeitgeist! How is it that I was cool when I was young, and now I’m so unhip as to be unable to keep up with the New York City zeitgeist-seeking crowd?

Then again, I’ve lived in the ‘burbs most of my life. Uncool. Uncool. (And they wonder why we call them “the media elite.”)

Vampire Diaries: Okay, I admit it. I was bored. It was on. I watched it twice. I did not watch the third episode. Seen all I needed to see to know that it’s basically another vampire romance teen saga, and, well, ew. Vampires must be staked. No exceptions. Wait. Angel. He’s the only exception, because he has a soul. Everyone else (including Spike), boom.

Castle: Yay, it’s back, and it’s still good. It’s the only crime show I’m interested in, and that’s because they don’t generally cut up bodies and try to figure out how they died.

Looking forward to: V. The new series looks excellent. Dollhouse: Premiere tonight. My DVR’s been set since last season ended. Which is a good thing, because it’s on while I’m in synagogue. Bummer that Terminator didn’t make it.

Borrowing television formats isn’t new; some of our most successful franchises—”American Idol,” “Survivor,” “The Office,” to name three—started in Europe. But with two shows hitting TV this year and another two in development, it’s Israel that is fast becoming Hollywood’s cheat sheet. “B’Tipul,” a drama about a therapist and his demanding clientele, was adapted into HBO’s critically acclaimed series “In Treatment.” Premiering this fall on CBS is “The Ex List,” which was adapted from the Israeli series “Mythological X.” “List” is a romantic comedy about a woman who learns from a psychic that she has already dated—and broken up with—her soulmate, and if she can’t narrow him down from her lengthy roster of suitors, she’ll spend life as a spinster. It’s no wonder Israel is such a close friend of the United States. To judge from their television shows, the Israelis are just as neurotic as we are.

And what about “All in the Family?” It’s interesting that Israeli television has progressed to the point where American television seeks to emulate it.

Daled Amos points out that there are another couple of concepts in the pipeline too. (Also from the Newsweek article.)

Also forthcoming are adaptations of “Merhak Negia” (“A Touch Away”), a story of forbidden love between an Orthodox Jewish woman and a Russian immigrant, and “Loaded,” an “Entourage”-like comedy about a quartet of dotcom millionaires. And as long as Israeli television shows combine high quality with low price tags, it doesn’t take a psychic to predict that more television executives will be making pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

Interesting about those dotcom millionaires. I guess that show doesn’t have as much to do with neurosis as American admiration for Israeli tech know-how.

Anthony, the managing partner of New York-based venture-capital fund 21 Ventures, told a Montreal audience that Israel is “the single best place in the world to invest in technology ventures.”

Anthony was the guest speaker at the inaugural Albert Einstein Business Forum, co-sponsored by the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to Canada. The guests came largely from Montreal’s financial and investment sector.

He founded 21 Ventures four years ago when even high risk-tolerant investors were shying away from Israel after the tech bubble burst and the intifadah was still being waged.

He has investments now in 20 seed and early-stage technology companies in Israel and the United States, mainly in the physical security, clean energy and mobile software fields, and is actively seeking more.

(h/t NY Nana at LGF links)

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

I was about to give up on Lost at the end of last year. It really came back strong in the third season. I’m looking forward to the fourth.

Maybe I’ll get to do an episode summary this weekend. That was a lot of episode to summarize, some good, some bad, some “I knew it!” moments, some “Huh?” moments. And one big giant “Awwwwwwww.” So yay for that, at least.